Part 4

It was true. Bleeding to death? Bleeding to birth? She did not know. But flowing.

“God, let me think!” The words came aloud.--God, let me think! now silent....--Edith? Yes, Edith was flowing alive. But Edith was not herself, not _her_ blood flowing. Edith’s blood flowing. Let it flow for Edith.

Fanny sat shaken in a mother’s storm. Help for her child. Could her child flow first alone? Where was the mother to help her? Father? Fanny sat trembling. She saw him, as he oldens in the cant moulds of his ideals. Harry, pious, weak, stale ... leading the life of her child. What did she have of her father?--If she is like her father let her rot! But now would she not surely be like him? She alone could save her child from that. _She alone could, who could not._ ... The train ran.... Fanny saw the Town, it would be the world of her child growing, of her child learning to live in the world. World of such women! Edith’s blue eyes, open beneath the dimpled softness of her brows, behold a world of such women ... the only world! Stiff brittle creatures, floating upon the viscid surface of a stream they have no weight to pierce. And their Laws: “Have no weight, have no thrust that might pierce the viscid surface of our stream.” World of such men! Liars, builders of lies, men taught to pray to Christ and to cheat their fellows, to cheat their women and wear them ... trim them then wear them ... taught to ignore half of the aching world that was black.--Let me go back to Edith! O let me go back!... The train ran smooth.--You may not.

Fanny faced the dead of her heart. She felt the world of her child clear, how it stank, how it swarmed like an evil stinking weed sucking the soil of God. She saw the blue eyes of her girl. They stood upon a body, white and clear like a flower: and all about, the Weed, swarming and purulent with its harsh roots sucking soil, with its hot leaves stealing sun.--What can I do? She faced she could do nothing. Yet reasonably something. Fight ... pursuade. There was reason with the cry of her mangled heart that there was much she could do. _Turn back._ The train, racing, swept her eyes upon a world lying folded in myriad skies, a world solid, a world one with space and stars ... space solid joined her to the stars as her white body joined her eyes to her limbs. One. And Edith within it, flowing her way. Ruthlessly hers....--Let her blood flow for her.

Fanny facing the dead of her heart faced the life of failure. She knew at last she could live.

The train swam into a strewing of neat flat houses, cut across asphalt. A marble Dome in sun rose above smoke of roofs. Washington!... Leon’s home.--I must change here. Every hour New York trains every ... get there by day, though.

Fanny walked through a city incredibly neat.--Very fine. Government world. Fine and dead. It has not started to grow, it has not started to be. It is easy and fine, like a nonexistence.

Her feet were heavy as if she were walking in space.

“When, God,” she said aloud, “do I begin to think?”

* * * * *

She stood halted by a building. She knew which building it was.---- He is inside! Of course perhaps he is inside no longer. It was a gray pile rising in numberless piddling columns to the white of the sky. It was cold. She looked at it. “I am not going in.”

He was perfect in her. Why should she go in to take from him perfection? She was afraid for his perfection.--How can he be this holy man in this grave? The Government Building stood like an insolent lackey fending her off. It glared at her and was very insecure and stupid within its ruffles of marble. It strutted its turrets before her like a vain proud bird.--He is perfect. He is done. He is no more. He is buried here. She felt a great need to see him.

She knew she must not. “I must seek you,” she whispered against the mounting marble, “differently.”

She walked and knew that Leon Dannenberg who was in each of her steps, in each of her pangs, in each leap forward of her blood was forever beyond her eyes.--Here you are, holy man. Where am I? There you are.

She walked away. A vast openness was upon her flank, it ached sweetly as if her blood poured through it. An open longing lay upon her flesh as if she walked away from him who had given her birth.--You are behind. Not so far behind as Edith. Nearer, holy man. Farther ahead.

But as she walked the inept city, a scene came and it filled her. She gave herself her scene fully, voluptuously ... starving ... while the long buildings passed her in a squad of uniformed dull giants.

He is up from a wide desk. He says no word, looking deep in her eyes. One instant doubt as to the full free independence of her coming. Doubt goes before the intelligence of her eyes. He took her hands, very lightly, released them.

“I am going North. I am on my way North.”

“How can I help you?”

“You have helped me all you can.”

“He came back ... you told him?”

She nodded.

“He did not understand?”

“How could we expect he should understand? Would I? Do I?... if this all was not mine ...?”

“It is good, Fanny Luve. Go ahead.”

His face sudden is like a field under a sky of longing: a sun came down; his face glows in tender fear: it shadows to resolution.

“You must go North. We can’t understand. I can see, you are going right.”

“How can you see that, Leon?”

“No day since I left have you been far from me. You come into my thinking, my dreaming, into my sudden flying visions. You measure yourself always with them, with the best of them, Fanny. You measure full with them.”

“What you have said I could have said.”

His eyes came very near. They filled with tears of her. He looked away.

“But I am vague. O Leon, so blind!”

“You are no longer afraid of being blind. You are ready.”

“_Leon, what am I going to be?_”

“We are no longer prophets ... save in our lives. Live, Fanny.”

“Leon, I could fight.... I could win her, I could save her.”

“No, Fanny ... you are going to live.”

“I ... and Edith?”

“_You_....”

She walked with mouth tear-brimmed and open out of her fancied words. She saw about her with relentless eyes, felt with relentless feet, this hard pavement, these hard houses, hard white sky. Out of the deep scene came now upon her, as her mouth shut, clearer and more solid than the stone city his last words:

“You, Fanny ... not Edith, _you_ ... are to live.”

Clear feet carried body erect through the stone city. Mother worlds in blood poured from her, leaving white feet, white body, while the soul of Fanny swooned in a ruthless knowledge.

_FOUR_

PAVEMENT OVER EARTH

A man and a woman walked this day with Autumn burning all about them. The sun lay in thin cloud. The trees burst.

“I have found out, Fanny,” he said.

She was so shorter than he and her steps swifter than his long lurches. She felt him from his broad brown halfshoes upward ... big fleshly man, somehow lithe, somehow gentle like song above his crude-rhythming feet. And his hairy great hands she felt--as when they were on her body like a little child’s, so helpless yearning, so imperious.

“I knew I should find out if I gave myself the space to: that’s why I brought you up here. We came yesterday. This morning I know ... that I have known since the day you came into the Office asking for a job.”

She laughed.--I can laugh!

“O I see your thought: ‘That’s the conventional phrase.’”

“ ...from Christopher Johns!”

“Maybe he’s been so durn unconventional these forty years because he hadn’t found himself. Maybe he feels, now he can look at last straight at you and himself and understand, it’d be good to be conventional: like rolling in warm blankets which the hard days’ work has paid for.”

She felt the dissonance of her feet striking the rutted road beside his.

“There must have been a frost last night.”

“Look at that maple! It’s a blazing red, because there was a frost.”

She looked. He was keeping step.

“I mean it, Fanny. It’s nearly two years since I’ve known you ... nearly two years you’ve worked for me ... one year we’re--well--lovers though I fear the word for the rare wonder you have given me--why, why? But now it is a blossom of knowing, a whole Spring of knowing, woman! There has been Sylvia _Frau_, there has been Sadie. I chuck ’em both, and when it is done we marry.”

“Jonathan! I want you to walk quiet ... miles and miles beside me quiet, today all day--do you understand? I am listening for something.”

She knew he would, clutching his stick behind him in two fists.

Two years ... they tramped ... two years....

--You are Fanny Dirk, Mrs. Luve.... I’ll keep that name! And you have gotten tired already, tired of what if you look and face it you will find all bundled and labelled in two years. Labelled to know, Bundled ... to throw out! That’s clear, though the facing, the training of my eyes and the opening of my mind to hold what I face, is going to be hard.... Here is an autumn day and a dear man trudging so you are alone with it. Day of glory, day of flame, day of death. The leaves are singing for they are going to fall. The trees are singing for they are going to sleep. The world is a maze of trumpeting insects, loomed with flutters of dry grass, trill of seed, for soon comes snow stillness. O Fanny, once you were Springtime! I hear a man talk blossom and I feel September. The bundles ... the labels ... two years inventoried! Aren’t you a business woman, Fanny, earning two thousand a year? A year ... two years. Each year has a Spring and a Fall. A third year might green if you burn away like these trees.

“It is simply,” she whispered to herself, and the man watched her mouth: “do I want to green like these trees?... When will I learn to think?”

She knew already what was to be.

She struggled only, she gave this full free day in the air only, to know Why. Did not the world have reasons? She had suffered losing two lives that grew within her flesh. She had asked Why, and in the questioning been rent away so even these agonies were dim: they were worlds dead like dim moons in the dawn of her adventure. And that adventure was Why!

--Why shall I say No very soon ... so very soon? Why am I going to leave the warm of this dear man, the ease, the goodness of it all--why am I going to push him back into new Emptiness?

She saw him that first day: his arms thrust out, nervous arms, haggard hands, hair wet ... _business man_! this big bumping child, bumping in Emptiness? Dear ... so good (she could see that at once as of a horse and a dog all in one, and his life a currycomb brushing wrong, a bone marrowless): now, back he goes into worse Emptiness. Why?

--Tell me trees.... I am not tired, I am rested.

In the arms of this man, with my face turned away, I have rested. I can bear what you tell me.... I am hard like you.

... That afternoon, the ninth of beating about on pavement until pavement tumored upward through her legs, her bowels, her blood, stiffened her brain ... that afternoon she had felt strong again sudden.--So this is Business? this soft flesh in the hard City?

“Mr. Johns, you must let me have that place,” she told him very calmly.

The next day she hung her coat on the costumer in the corner away from the open window. A grey wall rose beyond eyes, shrill greenish white electric bulbs blazed, shutting them all together, papers typewriter woman and desks and murmur beyond: she found she wished to smile.

Solid New York! Solid New York relieved her burden of no base. She had visited New York before: she felt the City deep, having in that past surface of her life beheld its surface. She sensed an analogue. She too had not changed but had gone down below her surface to a turmoiled depth. Within still deeper was there not a quiet, as now she sensed the Quiet of the City under its torrential streets and its human million midges of fire through stone? Thus New York welcomed her: it was a place where people dwelt and had dwelt long, so she could feel it was a place where people dwelt. Her Southern City, ... almost as old, was dead where old, was raw and unaccustomed where it was new ... its industrial heart of smoke, its outskirts of prim bungalows. Here was a City _one_: the place she knew for such as she to come to.

--Such as I?

Loving New York so sudden above the agony of her intimate deprivals, she said: “We are something in common, you and I.” She and the wide solid City that untouched her frail and bloody inwardness ... lifting her up to a light where she could seek what this thing meant, this I.

In the Office was Clara Lonergan.

When she spoke to persons, particularly when she spoke to Clara, Fanny lost her quiet City: New York became a pullulent pile, a heaving surface above a boil of blood. So Fanny did not seek out persons, she feared that City.--Do I not need to seek myself? She feared the self that was like it. But Clara, she knew at once, she was not to avoid.

She saw in a glance that she was supposed to remove her hat. She took a seat demurely, her heart compressed and moving up and down as she breathed fragilely. She felt how all within her was fragile and was surrounded by a solid world. Miss Lonergan smiled:

“I guess Mr. Johns will see about you pretty soon,” and went into his Office. Her smile alone of the outside world also was fragile.

So Fanny sat demurely. Beyond her was a long dark room filling with girls. She heard their footfalls in the hall: at times through the wired glass of the door she caught faces ... face sallow hungry, face angrily uplifted toward sun and laughter by the means of rouge, face resigned in sweet debility.... That one will marry. As feet cadenced the hard cement Fanny’s heart fluttered. The door swung; voices angled against the feet and the door, escaping in this brief interim of home and work in allusive herd-calls: Fanny felt thrust away. Each voice and footfall thrust her. She struggled to be back.

--I am of you, now, she argued to herself. A little older than most. O in life so older!... But I am one of you now.

The door opening from the private Office called her sharp up. Miss Lonergan came in, seated herself with fingers already rustling at her pad. Mr. Johns loomed before her.

“Good morning. Good morning.”

He stood with his feet apart and his toes turned out. Fanny observed how his knees flexed inward, how his legs aburst in their drab trowsers flexed and gave her mind the same thought as his ruffled hands and hair: made her smile.

“Well now,” he was saying, “you two said anything yet to each other? get acquainted yet? no explanations?” He turned from the one woman to the other. “You’ll be friends. O all of us’ll be friends. What could be more companionable after all than to engage in the business of soft drinks ... making Delight Drinks for the thirsty people....”

Miss Lonergan struck a key of her machine. _Click_, she smiled.--I can’t wait for your nonsense. _Click clicket click...._

“You see,” went on Mr. Johns, “the people get hot and what cools em off is ice. But they wont pay for ice. Not much! Ice is ice ... nameless. We don’t furnish ice. They pay for our lovely game of names,” he handed Fanny a list. “So we send the names in the liquid forms, to the candy men and the soda men: and _they_ put in the ice: and the ice cools the people: and the people pay us.”

He flourished clumsily. His face glowed open about his clear blue eyes. “Will you come, Mrs. Luve?” His head serious now thrust back. “I want to show you the girls you are here to take care of.”

* * * * *

“Why I live on Twenty-First Street. That’s right near.”

“Let’s walk,” said Clara.

New York was open letting the calm day in. An afternoon of May ... made of the scent of far young grass, the swayings of far trees, the slopings of far hills ... lay above the streets where Fanny and Clara walked: came down, feathery certain into the open City, into their eyes and limbs. They walked languorous through a sleepy city lying like a brittle-kneed woman under the loved day. The City glowed with half responses ... new. The angle of a street falling away from the straight street where they walked was a gesture of pleasaunce. Above the clotted people the dim houses leaned gently together, making a haze of memory above the urgence of people. The streets turned angles leisurely: a Square beyond them was an invitation like a hand open or a mouth relaxed, the swerve of the Elevated train on the near Bowery was a stroke that caressed.

“You are from the South, I can hear that. Have you been here long?”

“About a month,” said Fanny.

“I was born here. I wonder what it’s like, coming to New York.”

“New York is easy to come to.”

“Do people come here happy?”

Fanny did not want to look at Clara. The day was lazy and round, falling into night. “Why do you ask that?” she said.

“O I don’t know.... I was just wondering--why do they come to New York.”

“Why did your parents come?”

“My father’s family was starving in Wicklow. Pa was a boy and no use at home ploughing more fields for a grabbing landlord. So he came. He wasn’t happy coming. Mother I don’t remember very well, she came from a place near Pressberg in Bohemia. She was so lovely always ... tall and so sweet ... and always so tired. I guess they were all just tired--her whole family came--they couldn’t keep still. I’ve been tired that way. I’d keep moving and moving. I’d say to myself; Now Clara if you’ll just try and stop and _sit down_ you’ll be better. I couldnt. Something like that I’ve felt in all the foreigners ... Czechs and Dagos and Bohunks ... I have ever seen. Something in ’em I guess got too tired to hold on, to stay on, they had to move ... and there’s America all ready, a chute like in the cowpens I’ve seen over in Brooklyn ready to swallow ’em up as they come tumblin’. Heaven knows where those foreigners get their idea of us.”

She was taller than Fanny, slimmer.--She cant be more than eighteen. Fanny’s heart went out, clamorous, sudden ... stopped against a strength and a maturity she felt. With her heart’s warmth she saw this girl.

Saw sharp against the day’s languor the long face, clear dark, with narrowing thrust chin from the full mouth, cheeks high and delicate, brow faintly curving and sheer beneath the black hair. Saw in the soft fabric of her waist nervous elbows thrusting outward always as she walked, against air, against world. Saw the whole taut tender body in a world less clear, ever less fair than her dark freshness. Saw at last as they stopped: “Well I go here. See you to-morrow” ... eyes very black very large, dry and within themselves like windows of some hidden world having no faith in the sun.

--I have lost what you have not yet begun to make. Yet my hand is softer than yours! Fanny knew it was a thing which must change: that her hand was softer. She walked the swirling Spring-drunk dusty streets with thoughts of this girl and her hand.

* * * * *

She had a room which she had come to love. It was upstairs in the back of an old red brick house: it was oblong, square-buttressed by its honest doors painted white, its two wide windows and its low grey ceiling. She had spent eight dollars to remove the acid-red carnations blotching a sea of green bars on the walls ... (“I want you to scrape first, not paper over it”) ... then clad her room in a dull buff. The walls were bare. The landlady grumblingly took out the wide iron bed, leaving her a couch. The carved oak table, the bastard Empire chairs were distributed to the rest of the lodgers and replaced by plain ones from the storeroom. She took off her hat, let down her hair, put slippers on her feet and drew a chair to the wind. The day was more darkly textured but still clear. An ailanthus flaunting half naked through its tinselly leaves thrust above fence and tesselate brick walls between her and the grey rear of a Church. Beside the Church, a small house receded, built of the same dim sooty stone. On Sundays, the sun vaulted the cluttered roofs at just about the time that a hymn, many-voiced, shone through the corner of the stained-glass window which she could glimpse on the protruding side. There was a little grass plot. It was littered with dust and ash bits, fluffs of drifting textile: but now sod pushed bravely up in a dim green. On the high fence at the side away from the Church, among clusters like sunrays of iron spikes, clothes-lines were drawn. A servant was busy taking in the wash.

The girl’s arms reached up, loosed clothes-pins, dropped her armsfull in a basket. The girl’s arms reached up.... Fanny lost herself in the dull catatony. She was tired. She held her eyes beyond her. Dimly behind she felt a world she did not wish to turn to: world where there were wash-lines and a girl her own.... Industrious, this girl. A young man stepped from the kitchen door of the house. The girl’s arms, full of tableclothes, suspended against her breast. He spoke to her, she nodded: disposed her burden. She was bent before him, he leaned down and kissed her. He stepped back, his arms and hands and shoulders, his feet and hips throwing out little splintery signals of his panic. He wore the cloth of the Church. Then the girl straightened, lifted her hands to her broad hips and smiled. The little curate’s splintering commotion melted. He kissed her again. They went together into the kitchen.

Fanny sat very still. She felt that the muscles of her throat and legs and chest were tense, holding her still.

--What is the matter?

The world dim behind her eyes bellied out ... swallowed the cool grey scene before her of a backyard, a flirting servant and a Church. A Church! Fanny swung around in her chair. She was circled now by a world no longer dim. She asked no question. Like one dropped sudden into a sea, she swam.

She swam to get out. Not yet ... some day ... she must swim in the other direction, away from shore, away from shore ... swim, swim till she sank. But something within her told her she was not ready. This dullness upon her mind, this fog fending her heart that was there since the month she was gone: let it be there longer. Was it beginning to part?

--Why am I here? I am afraid to ask why I am here. Solid New York, bear me up! Longer, your cold surface, lift me, hold me!

She swam to get out. She was up from her chair. Humming a tune she did not hear or know of, she lighted the gas: she clasped her short thick hair and thrust it atop her head. The gas danced hard on her eyes and her black hair. She lighted her little stove: she put water to boil: she was very busy swimming to get out.

And when she had drunk two coddled eggs and eaten an orange, she took the blue cover from her couch, folded it carefully away, threw wide her windows: and with the light of the downtown heavens falling in sprays and fluffs of murmurous gold against her sombre carpet, she lay down. Soon she slept.

* * * * *

Work gripped her. Mr. Johns was delighted with her way of work.

“Dont kill yourself, Mrs. Luve.”

She smiled wistfully. “I shant die.”

He looked at her warmly. “You say that as if you knew.”

“I know.”

“Perhaps you don’t know the deadliness of New York.”

“I’m not ready yet,” she announced half to herself.

“You’re a bad example,” he caressed her with bluff words, “of Southern indolence.”

“I’m a New Yorker,” she said and went back to her girls.

Always she knew this could not last. Yet always life came easier, easier ... in its harsh brusque work, in its biting flavor of intercourse with Mr. Johns, with Clara.